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Edit: deleted because I made a mistake in providing the original situation / scenario. The "hard drive" dates were not changed ... I was mistakenly looking at the child "volume" "Alias" which always changes whenever you boot up. Sorry !
catmac
Posted 2015-06-25T22:09:13.173
Reputation: 3
1
The computer running can cause changes in dates, it is not evidence of them copying or modifying your files. Those dates change all the time, without formatting or copying.
I doubt it's a bug of any kind but I also highly doubt they have copied your files.
I worked in a computer repair shop for 8 years, trust me that people aren't interested what's on your computer, we've seen it all before and really don't care to take the time to look or copy data.
After a conversation in the comments section with the OP, it has been determined that the data on the drive was manipulated in someway for some reason in my opinion.
It is unknown why or how the data was manipulated, but it was more than likely repaired or cloned in some manner of speaking.
Craig Lowe
Posted 2015-06-25T22:09:13.173
Reputation: 163
No worries. Yeah I meant NOT, I've corrected it, thank you. I'm not entirely sure about that date as I don't use OSX very often. – Craig Lowe – 2015-06-25T23:16:30.683
What are you using to look at the now external harddrive? – Craig Lowe – 2015-06-25T23:24:46.397
Did the shop you take it to say they had to replace the drive? Is there any reason you can think of that the drive has been cloned? – Craig Lowe – 2015-06-25T23:32:42.317
It's unlikely that the CREATED DATE would change just because of booting the drive, especially system wide. It's possible they cloned the data onto another drive but unlikely if they didn't mention this or charge you for the parts. The data on the drive may have been repaired. The metadata could be corrupted because the data has been moved to another system as such. – Craig Lowe – 2015-06-25T23:43:25.820
More likely than not the date information was lost when the drive was moved, possibly because the permissions on the drive had to be reset. I'm not entirely familiar with Mac drive formats though. – Craig Lowe – 2015-06-25T23:45:02.987
I would say so yes. It's possible the data just need rebuilding or they had to clone it to another drive. They may of had to restore a lost partition. The possibilities are endless, but it seems as if the data has been manipulated in someway or another. The reasons for this are endless, and most likely harmless. – Craig Lowe – 2015-06-25T23:50:17.243
okay, thanks a lot for your thorough and informative responses ! – catmac – 2015-06-26T00:26:12.433
Not a problem, if you have any more questions don't hesitate to ask. – Craig Lowe – 2015-06-26T00:26:42.313